Customer Reviews

Dazzle Multimedia DM4100 Digital Video Creator

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I have the parallel version of this device and have not had the benefit of encountering any usb related problems. however, most of the reviews here are misplaced. most of these other reviews sound as if these people bought the wrong product. the Dazzle DVC is a mpeg encoder, which means it is best suited for computer files. low-resolution for e-mails to high-resolution for presentation. a cd-rw drive is a must once you have this item. i have backed up several hours of family movies and made many copies on cd-r. you can put 1 hour of good quality video on a cd-r that costs less than $.75 . perfect to pass many copies to family and friends. with the right software you can even make a video cd (vcd) which can be played on about one-third of dvd players. If you're looking to make vhs tapes out of your editing process you'd be better served with a video capture card. for the most part the Dazzle DVC is mostly about mpeg files. the video capture cards that have to be installed into a computer do not offer the range of features that the Dazzle does.

If you want to convert your VHS video tapes into digital format and don't want to purchase an expensive video capture card, this is an alternative.

I've been able to convert VHS tapes into decent MPG, Real, and Microsoft Windows Media files in size 320 x 240, but not without some hassle. As an earlier reviewer pointed out, the software that comes with this product is very buggy and be prepared to spend some time troubleshooting to get it working.

Here's my first experience. I use Windows 2000 on a PIII 550Mhz, with 256 RAM and 20 Gig EIDE harddrive. When Dazzle arrived, I followed the directions and installed the software and put the plug in the USB port and then discovered that this software only works with Windows 98. I visited the Dazzle web site and found out that you have to purchase a program called Movie Star is you want to use it with Windows 2000. I wound up ordering the software for [more $] plus shipping. Once, I received the new disk, I installed it, and once again, it did not detect the unit when I plugged it into the USB port. And again, I visited the Dazzle web site. I discovered that they have posted a patch for the Movie Star software that fixes "some minor problems." I downloaded and installed the patch and after rebooting the machine, I was able to get it to detect the unit.

The next step was to get Dazzle to work with my cheap... Mitsubishi VHS player. I was able to get it to work with the S-Video port from my Panasonic DV camcorder, but I couldn't get it to detect the output plugs from the VHS player. Finally after rebooting the machine twice, I got it to work.

Next getting the software to work was another challange. despite having a fast machine with a lot of RAM, I found the Movie Star program to be very unstable. I was able to capture up to 60 minutes of video and save it to the MPEG format, but everytime I tried to edit or export the video as Windows Media or Real, it crashed the machine. I downloaded a copy of Ulead's Video Studio, but couldn't figure out how to import MPEG files. I finally bit the bullet and wound up downloading a free 30-day trial of Adobe Premier. I found Premier to be a very stable and easy to use program. I just wish it didn't cost [so much!]

For my trouble, I found the output from Dazzle to be satisfactory. You would get better results if you spent big money for video capture card that would let you plug an S-Video cable into the back of your PC. Another better alternative would be to use Firewire. (I always use Firewire with my Panasonic DV camcorder and it works great.)

After my experience, I cannot recommend this unit to others. I don't think it's fair that this company charges Windows 2000 users extra $.. for buggy software. And I think they could improve the USB connect so it isn't so difficult to use. I am giving this Unit two stars because it does the job, but only after spending a lot of time and some additional money to make it work.

If you want a small, low resolution image that has unsynchronized audio (or you have forever to wait on the audio sync), this one is for you! Oh, yea, don't expect to be able to videoconference with your camcorder.

If you want to capture home videos with no or low loss of quality and want it done at a reasonable speed, you probably don't want this one (or any other USB or similarly slow external connection).

This product claims to have perfectly synchronized audio, which it does, but only when playing back a recorded clip on your computer. When viewing the input on your computer or outputting to a television, there is a delay of about one second from the time you hear something to the time you see it. This device does not function as a normal TV tuner or TV-out device, nor will it work for videoconferencing. You're probably better off buying an internal video capture device than going through USB.

It's a great tool if you want to import your video clips into the computer. However, if you want to send them back out, the best you can get is 320x240 Resolution. Which is half of what you originally recorded it at. Or, in other words, bad quality. No thanks.

I purchased the USB version of this unit and ran through the setup procedures without a hitch. When I started to use it , the trouble began. After many hours of frustration I called the technical support number and was told by a rep and a supervisor that this device will not work if ANY other USB device is used. This is unbelievable when you consider the entire purpose of USB is to connect multiple devices to your computer! I was told to disconnect my other USB devices (mouse, keyboard, scanner, printer, and Palm Pilot cradle). When they saw the problem with disconnecting the mouse and keyboard (duh), they told me to return it.

First time I plugged it in and installed the drivers it worked instantly. Captured about four hours worth of high quality video with no sync problems on a P3-450 with 128megs ram.

I then installed a USB cd writer. The Dazzle device no longer works. I really don't care what installing the cd writer did, I see this as a major flaw. My USB cd writer and USB zip drive work perfectly. I'm now forced to use this device on another, much slower computer. Nothing about this is mentioned on their site.

This product is VERY flakey. After making changes to video settings, you must exit the program, unplug the device, plug it back in, and restart the capture program. This seems to be Dazzle's solution for every problem I've encountered with this piece of uhm.. plastic.

It feels as if this product was rushed out in a "just make it work" strategy. Dazzle obviously did not test this product thoroughly enough before finalizing it.

Stay away. Get a digital camcorder and DV card instead.

Like many of the other reviews, I agree that the Dazzle product created nice MPEG videos. I had no problems with audio sync but I did have to disable the preview mode because my computer (a 455MHz) didn't have enough processing power to keep up. My main gripe is when I tried to transfer the MPEG files back to VHS. in 50% of the cases, the Dazzle product froze up. In the other cases, I saw major decoding defects. Despite all of the troubleshooting and changes to my Windows 98 setup, it never worked very well. I guess you get what you pay for.

Do yourself a favor and check out Dazzle's website bulletin page and troubleshooting to get an idea of other problems (most of which I also encountered).

The Dazzle is a great product for the digitization of VHS and other sources with an RCA output. However you should understand that it is not a exactly a full digital workshop. The included software is farely unintuitive and useful only for capturing the video in mpeg format. Altering and arranging the video proves difficult with the included software, and overall pointless. To work with the video, I recommend having a large amount of hard drive space available (I digitized a two hour vhs movie which took approximately 2gigs of hd space). On the plus side, this device was extremely easy to setup, and worked well on my PIII 900 laptop w/ 128 at any quality level. This device does capture the video extrememly well. I was able to capture video at well above vhs quality with little trouble (the only restriction to this is the aformentioned size requirements which can be taken care of with a little file conversion. I recommend DivX). To this end the device has been very useful, with variable quality selections depending on your source. One last note: Do not buy this device if your purpose is to watch tv. For some reason I have yet to find a piece of software that will allow me to watch the incoming video fullscreen at 30fps.

I purchased the Dazzle Video Creator in hope of transfering my analog vhs tapes into a digital format. It was a neat idea, a plug and play option that I could install without opening the computer case. Great idea, right?

Well, this is where everything goes wrong. After istalling the software bundle and getting the Dazzle up and running I ran into severe problems. Mainly being the computer just wouldn't recognize the audio or sound files. Hey, no problem I'll just call tech support to get this ironed out. Much to my dissatisfaction I found out thier tech support was almost nonextistant. They never and let me repeat never helped me at all ever to get this problem ironed out.

So save your dough and buy a real video capture card and save your money or you could end up let me with a totally worthless piece of junk that don't work.